


ripeness and earth

by owlinaminor



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Purple Prose, Tom Blake Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:40:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23248627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: You are hungry—for warmth, for milk, for hands to hold and a body to rest in.  For a soft, dry patch of earth, and wood enough to build a fire.
Relationships: Lauri & William Schofield, Lauri/William Schofield's Wife
Comments: 9
Kudos: 40





	ripeness and earth

**Author's Note:**

> dedicated to the wlw of the 2nd devons discord, you are all genuises and I love you. special shout-outs to [iris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightcalling/pseuds/nightcalling) who is _also_ posting [a fic with this ship](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23249095) today, and to [eliza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bruisedghost) for coming up with this galaxy brain rairpair in the first place. sorry sam and krysty, these characters are OURS now and we're making them GAY.
> 
> title/epigraph from _housekeeping_ by marilynne robinson.

> _To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know anything so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing—the world will be made whole.  
> _

The baby is hungry.

She is always hungry: for warmth, for milk. For an arm to hold her, for an audience to hear her cry. You hold her—it is all you can do. You listen, you hold her up to the meager light wafting in through the windows and you watch the shadows cross her face, painting her delicate, capturing her just for a moment before she begins once more to scream.

You listen, and you say, _I know,_ because you do. You are hungry—for warmth, for milk, for hands to hold and a body to rest in. For a soft, dry patch of earth, and wood enough to build a fire.

“Don’t be afraid,” the Englishman says. “It’s me.”

It’s a silly order. First, he has no power over you—no sun, no musket, no flag could lift your limbs or tear them, not while you still draw breath. Second, you are never afraid. Afraid is only a word, a collection of vowels and consonants, a pull of the tongue and a push of the teeth. You are every breath of air vibrating through your lungs, you are the expansion and contraction, you are the exchange in the bloodstream, you are microscopic pulled through corridors of a vast machinery you cannot understand and you are—you are always afraid.

Not that you can tell him that, of course.

“Can I hold her?” the Englishman’s friend says.

This soldier: he is steadier-built, stands easily where the Englishman is nervous, like he could be blown over by a sharp gust of wind. His face is rounder, his cheeks red with sunburn, and he laughs when you hand him the baby—laughs unencumbered, untethered, a balloon in a picture book floating up into the sky.

You stare at him—what is he, to laugh like that in a war zone. A monster, a god? You find your first Englishman is staring, too. And the baby—she is staring, her eyes wide, her center of gravity pulled.

What must it be like, you wonder, to have your world contracted like that. The baby’s limbs are still limp, her head soft. The vision before her eyes is a narrow kaleidoscope, every color new. Perhaps that is why we cannot remember our early childhoods. Every color new, every person important, every sound a symphony.

“Okay, that’s enough,” you tell the young soldier—scold him until he understands. “Give her back to me.”

“I’ve made you a map,” the young soldier says.

“It will get you to Bedford,” the older one adds. “My wife is expecting you. We can take you the first part of the way.”

You carry the baby.

They offer to switch off: every half hour, at first, then every hour. You keep track easily, as the younger one keeps checking his watch. Then it is only when you start to fall behind, the mud slick against your boots and the scent of the bodies so rancid that you pull your scarf up around your mouth and pull the baby into your coat, you feel her little hands curl up against your collar and you wonder what it is like to be small, to be carried, to be weightless. Is it like walking upon the surface of the earth, swinging softly in space?

And then, they offer: as you climb the ridge where their unit is camped. They empty their pockets of food, water, words. You don’t understand the diction, but you know the meaning. _Stay safe. Travel fast. Take care of the baby. There is somewhere safe waiting for you, somewhere safe._

You let the younger one hold the baby again: he clutches her to his chest, cradles her little head in one soft hand and smiles down at her, his expression all open. You’re surprised his kindness hasn’t yet gotten him killed. The older one kneels and reaches out—the baby wraps his index finger in her tiny palm.

“Say the rhyme,” you tell him. You repeat it, until he understands. “The rhyme from when we met. Say it again.”

England is cold and damp.

France was, too, but it didn’t weigh on you like this: it settles, as though there is guilt sunk into the very landscape, the hills and valleys and forests. You walk until your legs ache, and then you walk on more. The baby cries. She wants—food, milk, touch. Her wailing carries, rings out over the hills and down the dirt paths and through the cow pastures.

She wants. You want. But the landscape is all shadows and shades of brown, all old stone walls and divided patches of wilderness—until a farmhouse rises at the edge of Bedford. Right where it was marked on the map.

You find it in the sunset, the trees and grass and tiles of the roof all painted reddish-gold. Like you’ve stepped into a painting, like you’ve stepped into another world. Your ears are ringing, and you realize—it’s birds, singing birds, not faraway shells.

You take the last few steps and knock on the door.

“Hello,” the woman says.

Her voice is soft, and her silhouette is—bathed in light, the fire behind her—soft, too, at the edges, like a dream of a woman, a vision of a woman brought to three dimensions, and it is only when she steps out toward you that you believe she is real. You believe: the long planes of her nose, the curves of her cheeks, the delicate circles of her ears tucked beneath waves of reddish hair. Her eyes are hazel, you think, or they are reflecting the sunset. It has been so long since you’ve seen another woman—and you are hungry, you want to touch and to taste, but—this is a _woman,_ this is a _wife._ You hold tight to the baby and try to remember your English.

“Hello,” she says again, or perhaps this is still the first and time itself is expanding around you. “I’m Eleanor. Will told me to expect you. What’s your name?”

“Lauri,” you say. It’s been so long—the syllables are almost foreign on your tongue, but then she repeats it and they sink back into your skin, they return.

“And what is the child’s name?” Eleanor asks, holding one hand out as her husband had, letting the baby hold her.

“I do not know,” you say. “She is not mine.”

Eleanor looks up—and you are caught in her eyes, green-blue and endless as your memory of the sea.

“You brought her here,” she says. “You must name her.”

You name the baby Croisilles, after the trees. Lily for short. You try to explain how you passed through the forest escaping the Germans, how the oaks and beeches made you feel small finally like you were a sapling and not an enemy, how the soldier came to you desperate and bleeding and asked you the way. Eleanor doesn’t quite understand, but you will tell her again. You will find the words.

You learn English like this: through touch.

Eleanor takes you into the garden. She hands you the vegetables, the herbs, the flowers. It is her spring harvest, and it is familiar: crouching in the wet earth, dirt under your nails, callouses forming as you pull. You pull up a carrot, and she says _carrot,_ and you say _carrot._ You repeat it together, you run your finger across the ribbed skin. Onion, _onion,_ beet, _beet,_ potato, _potato._ The dirt from the garden becomes the dirt on your hands, the vegetables from the garden become the warmth in your stomach, the water from beneath the latrine returns to compost the garden. Eleanor explains this cycle one day beneath the afternoon sunlight, her finger tracing a circle in the dirt.

You watch her finger: long, elegant even with a chipped nail. You wonder if she played piano, before the war, or if she used to sit and flip through novels, keeping one pinky finger hooked in as a bookmark. Or if she has always been here, on her knees, her shirtsleeves rolled up.

You watch her—you watch the way her forearms pull taunt when she yanks a weed out of the garden, sweat shining. You want.

The first question you learn to ask is, “May I?”

_May I heat up milk for Lily. May I clear the dishes from supper. May I read Abigail a story in my funny French accent._

_May I sit with you on the porch after dinner, Eleanor, may I pour you a glass of wine even though I know you were saving it for a special occasion. May I admire your profile in the sunset, the way the light reflects in your eyes, the way your skin catches fire. May I ask you to recite your poetry—Shakespeare, Marlowe, Donne, the little verses you’ve written yourself. May I admire your voice, the way it lifts, the way you never raise it with your daughters but you raise it with me sometimes, consonants growing sharp as you explain the complications of poetic form and farmers market prices and nautical exploration and—stop, always, to ask if I understand. To repeat, if I need it._

_May I, may I, may I please._

“Lauri,” Eleanor says.

And your name in her voice is so lyrical—old vowels given new melody, new color—that you want to swallow it yourself whole, you want to keep it forever.

You go to her one night after sunset.

She is sitting by the fire, reading from a little leather book. The girls are all asleep, the only light is the fire and scant silver reflected in from the moon.

Her brows are drawn in concentration, and you want to smooth them. You want—and you are vibrating with it, your want is a vegetable garden in spring, all the seedlings sprouting at once. And it is a forest, all the trees gasping for light, and it is the clouds in a long-awaited rainstorm spilling open and it is—

You bend down and press your lips to hers. She can kick you out—you and Lily, you know enough English now to pass and you are barely keeping yourself in check anyway and you—

She kisses you back. Her lips are soft, chapped, warm. She tastes of coffee and she opens for you, she catches your face in her hands.

Eleanor’s bed is the warmest place in the world.

She pulls you there, first: that night after the fire, her hand encircling your wrist, these fingers that have pulled vegetables and pulled needles through fabric and pulled her body up onto the roof to repair the tiles after a storm—these fingers pulling you now, and you are the garden and the rain, you are gravity learning a new language.

You hesitate there at the edge of the bed and she brings your hand to her face, she leans in and presses a kiss to the side of your mouth.

“My husband won’t mind,” she whispers. “We have an arrangement. I—Lauri, I want this. Do you want this?”

You nod, and then you say _yes,_ and then you nod again. Her face, so close and soft in the shadows, grows blurry at the edges—perhaps, you think, perhaps you are crying. She smiles and takes your face in her hands, smooths out the tears with her thumbs. She pulls you in in _in_ until you are tumbling.

Language becomes easier, after that.

Eleanor’s bed is the warmest place in the world.

It catches the sunlight in the morning: the light is another blanket, piled on with the cotton and the wool. It’s decadent, almost—you’ve never slept in a bed for two people before, you’re used to cots and mats and tents beneath the trees and this is a four-poster, a wooden headboard, room to hang coats and quilts off the edges when it grows too warm. And it is _warm—_ the bed holds warmth, holds it and gathers it close, as though you are inside of a glowing ember, keeping the fire in your chest.

You wake, arms splayed out, face turned to the sun, and find her watching you. And you cannot speak, for a moment: she is an angel in the golden light, or an ancient goddess, she is a vision from another world.

Except that she is neither angel nor vision because she reaches out one hand—presses her index finger to your lips, your cheek, traces the lines of your face up to your ear, pushes a strand of hair out of your eyes. Her fingers are soft but real—dirt under her nails—and warm, warm, warm.

“Good morning,” she says in French, her lips clumsy around the consonants.

“Good morning,” you reply in English. And you lean in to kiss her.

Eleanor learns French like this: through touch.

The vegetables in the garden, yes, but also the books piled high on her dresser, little leather volumes of poetry and prose. She reads a line and you try to translate, you trace the letters into her skin. And she learns like this: in the massive bed after the girls have gone to sleep, you inscribe her. You mark words into her neck, her chest, the insides of her thighs. You try to keep quiet in case Lily wakes, keep it to soft moans and whispers, but sometimes you pull her to the edge and she _cries—_

You go into town one day, you and Lucy on an errand to buy a new dress, except that a small shop catches your eye and you pull Lucy in to find bookshelves piled high. Mystery and romance, history and poetry, you run your fingers over spines until you find a little blue volume with a white border, poems by Guillaume Apollinaire with English translations on the opposite pages. You bring it back to Eleanor, Lucy laughing at you all the way because you can’t stop grinning.

You read it to her by the fire that night as she braids your hair, and every word is her delicate fingers on your skull, diving and caressing and making you real.

You are hungry.

You are always hungry—and the world, the world is always hungry. Your stomach rumbles in the mornings in time with the rising sun, you want wine and light and touch. The vegetables want sunlight and water and soil—you water them carefully when the rains are low, you balance the can between your palms. The soil wants dead things, remains of your breakfasts and suppers, the core of an apple or the peel of a potato to pull down into the earth and remake.

And the boys, when they return—Will and Tom dusty and smiling in their uniforms, picking up the girls and spinning them around and saying how they’ve grown—they want, too, and the world is not done with them. You listen to their stories by the fire, and the tone is clear, if not the meaning. They say _we are lucky_ and you think no, _no, you were stolen, you were yanked from your lives and made into weapons, you were kicked and bled and given nightmares._

You tell them, “We are not lucky. But we are all home.”

That was one of the first words you learned, _home._ Will looks at you when you say it, and Eleanor does. They pull you between them, Tom wraps his arms around all three of you together, and Eleanor wipes your eyes when they fill with tears.

You all fill the four-poster bed, all four of you, in a cacophony of limbs. Will says he will build a second one, but you don’t mind sharing. It is the warmest place in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor) / [tumblr](https://owlinaminor.tumblr.com/) / [let's go lesbians](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor/status/1224540109338484736)
> 
>  **edit, 5/25:** @freckledraws on twitter drew [the last scene](https://twitter.com/freckledraws/status/1265004918169047040) of this fic!!!! this art is absolutely gorgeous i have looked at it for five hours now


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